Super Secret Pudding Project

Not pudding pudding. Yorkshire pudding.

Can I tell you about the project? No. Can I tell you the how's or why's? No. It's a secret. I can tell you one thing. It's a delicious project. Wait, I lied, I can tell you two things. I'm working with another agent on the project. We are comrades in yorkshire pudding struggle.

Exhibit A - Yorkshire puddings. Look at that dip. Whoa mama. I would mention the other stuff, but who cares?

Exhibit B - As nature intended. Yorkshire puddings as gravy holding receptacles.

The first rule of yorkshire pudding club is you don't talk about yorkshire pudding club.
The second rule is no smoking.

This blog post will self destruct in 5...4...

The following meals are brought to you by indecision

I'm not good at making decisions. At all. Sometimes when I can't decide what I want to eat, I make everything that sounds good at once and then have leftovers for ages. I sometimes like when this happens.


This meal was inspired by wanting generalised Indian food. There is tofu and aubergine tikka masala, wholegrain rice, vegetable samosas and onion bhajis.

This meal was inspired by wanting generalised carby stodge. There is spicy pepper pasta, aubergine pomodoro, garlic bread, and mini peppers stuffed with garlic and herb cream cheese and battered. Look at that cream cheese oozing out...


Love me! I just noticed the follow me thingy on blogger because it told me that the lovely Kismet was following me. You should also follow me. Why? Because I'm needy and like to be loved. Do it. You know you want to. The link is right over there --->

Wanna hear a whole big pile o' excuses?

Then read on brah!

Okay, so first off there was the surgery. It took a while to recover from that, and a while longer to be able to eat anything I'd want to take a picture of. How did the surgery go? Well, not so great. The surgeon went in and what he saw was too far gone for silly little keyhole surgery so he just flushed my joint out and closed me up. The flushing gives temporary relief for about a week or so, so that's long gone. So, anyway, I had my review appointment the other day and as it turns out, I need bilateral joint replacements. Whoop-di-doo. I don't need them right now, but at some point before I'm 30. This sucks because once you start having them you need to replace them every 10 years or so, so essentially this was a life altering piece of news that made me require a short pity party. I'm okay now though, mainly because I rock. Anyhoo, to delay needing the first one, I'm having some surgery soonish to freeze my joint capsule because that's where all the nerves (and thus pain) are. If all goes well with that, it should delay the need for joint replacements for a good few (max 5) years. It could all not work though, and being the eternal pessimist that I am, I hold out little hope.

Let's see... More excuses... I'm back at uni and I'm in my final year, which is crazy but exciting and I'm kinda enjoying the crazy.

Anyhoo, I will now stick with the 'food' part of the whole food blog shtick and post some food. I warn you though, due to all of the above, it will be in no way exciting. In fact, two of the three photos are of tofu scramble. Oh yes, I win at originality.

This is the way I always make scrambled tofu. There's always peppers and onion, and various spices. That's as much of a recipe as I'm ever able to stick to. It's served on some amazing multi seed bread and topped with fresh basil (you may start to sense a theme with the basil).



This scrambled tofu was inspired by the post on Vegan Dad's blog (which btw, I love). Of course, I didn't follow the recipe at all, but this was really good, and I can see it being a staple when I'm in dissertation mode and haven't seen a fresh vegetable in a while.

In a brief departure from scrambled tofu, is this good old vegan stereotype of the stuffed pepper. I stuffed this sweet pepper with marinated tofu and fried rice. Again, topped with fresh basil, obviously.

Anyways, I'll try and be better at keeping up with ye olde blogosphere, but what can I say? When you still consume rather a lot of liquid foods it can get difficult to find enough to post. I'll try my best though, I'm just awesome like that.

Two Weeks on Monday...

...Is when the big bad surgeon man is going to be cutting into my pretty pretty face. Send me all your good vibes (and care packages).

Anyhoo, food.
This is quinoa topped with sauteed spinach and green tiger tomatoes (which I have to admit I only bought because they looked pretty), and baked sweet chilli and garlic tofu. It was delicious.
Now, this isn't really a meal, but it's one of my new favourite breakfasts and I thought it looked pretty. It's multi seed rye bread, topped with green tiger tomatoes, oregano, basil, parmezano, and sea salt. Totally awesome.

People like me!

Well duh! I'm awesome. Anyhoo, I got nominated by the wonderful elise for a Brilliante Weblog Award. Yay! Go me! The first thing I have to do is put up the banner thingie.
Done. The apparently I'm supposed to link to the person who nominated me, but I already did that up there because I'm just way ahead of the game. Now (jeez, this awards malarkey is complicated) I have to nominate seven other blogs for the award. Fun!

• First I'm nominating the wonderful Kris over at Kris's Cruelty Free Kitchen because she always posts the kind of food I want to eat and because she's my Scottish freaky friend.
  
• Next I want to continue the (almost) Scottish freaky friend theme and nominate Sinead over at Kitchen Dancing. Her food always looks so fancy, plus she's a vegan biologist and I essentially want to be her when I grow up... Whenever that may be.
• Ida over at Yummy Vegan Dinners always takes awesome photos and hearty stick to your ribs kinda food that a stodge lover like me can appreciate.
• Vincent over at VeganImprov likes to pretend to be mean as corn but his food is always classy as...umm a classy thing (I'm Glaswegian, I'm not exactly the master of classiness).
• Okay, so I know I'm supposed to nominate seven people, but I don't play by no rules so I'm stopping at five! Lastly (and I hate to inflate his diva ego anymore) is Dino over at Alternative Vegan. I actually don't want to say anything about Dino because he loves himself enough as it is. (But he is a little bit awesome).

And now I have to go leave comments on their blogs to tell them! Jeez! No rest for the awesome!

Okay, so I should probably post some food. I gove to you... Tofu, rice and different sauces! Oh yes, my blog is truly revolutionary and worthy of an award.
General Taos Tofu from the legendary recipe at vegweb (oh how I <3 thee).


Sweet and Sour Tofu.

Revolutionary, I say!

An Oldie But A Goodie

Stuffed shells with sundried tomato and basil sauce. The shells are stuffed with garlic and herb cream cheese, spring onions, sundried tomatoes, and basil. Served with a mountain of kale because apparently I serve everything with a mountain of kale. Alas though, I think my love affair with kale may have to take a break. It's just too chewy on my full of fail jaw. *sigh*

Seitan, Kale and Tomatoes

Got home from work and wanted something quick. I had some seitan cutlets kicking about so I marinated it in garlic and baked it. Served atop some garlic sauteed kale with roast vine ripened tomatoes. Drizzled in balsamic glaze.
*drools*

I survived!

For a while there I was pretty much entirely composed of bruises, but I survived. To mark my survival, I give to you (all five of you) some pretty pictures:
This was taken from somewhere up a hill. I fear I may have repressed most of my hillwalking memories so I can provide no further info.
I do remember why I took this picture. You see the white foggy looking thing over yonder? Yeah, that was rain on another mountain. I obviously thought this was cool enough to take a picture of it.

Anyhoo, enough with that boring outdoorsy stuff and onto the food!
Naan pizza... Naanza! Umm yeah. Anyhoo, there was a recipe similar to this in Bryanna Clark Grogans latest (and last *sob*) newsletter. As usual I didn't actually use the recipe, but I used the idea. I made a spicy tomato sauce and made the cheesy sauce from the new farm cookbook. It was grand.
Curry crusted tofu, vegetable fried rice, and vegetable curry. The tofu was coated with loads of spices and then baked and grilled. Look at those grill marks! Oooh yeah! *ahem* Tasty!

Help!

Tomorrow after work I'm off on a 7 day residential course with uni. To the middle of nowhere. I'm scared. I'm taking three bags, one of which is entirely filled with food. I'm too much of a city girl for this stuff.

Wish me luck in my not dying endeavours!

If I see anything pretty I may take some pictures for you, if you're lucky. Bah!

*cries*

Work Food

As in, just home from work and jeezy creezy I want food in mah belly now. Quick food.
Cheezy pasta with sundried tomatoes and red chilli flakes. Teh yum.
Baked potato with roast vegetables, balsamic and chilli dressing and mature cheddar cheezly. Also teh yum.

Holy Inactivity Batman!

It's been a whole month since I last blogged! I suck!

I kinda lost my cooking mojo for a while. Lets not get all emoriffic, but with my jaw arthritis and stuff, I started associating eating with pain, so I'd been rushing food and eating a lot of smoothies and soups, which lets be honest, you don't want to see.

Anyhoo, what else has been going on in Lelly land? Well, I passed my exams. I'm not happy with my grades at all, but I keep telling myself that I'm doing well to have survived this semester, never mind anything else. What else? I started a new job on Monday. It's actually pretty great. Good money, a 10 minute walk away, and really relaxed atmosphere. The job itself is scarily important, so I think the atmosphere is to make up for that. Oooh, I'm officially on the waiting list to get my maxillofacial surgery. The surgeon reckons it should happen around August, so hopefully the end of the year will be much better than the beginning. After my surgery, I won't be allowed solid food for around 6 weeks, so the blog should become... interesting! Maybe I'll just post pictures of my (hopefully not too) gnarly scars. I have other good things going on just now, but maybe we'll talk about that some other time. Maybe.

Anyhoo, did I forget this was a food blog? I think I might have. I made a big pasta bake the other night so I'd have some food for after work for a few nights. Also, nice soft pasta is pleasing to my face. In this there was some form of curly pasta, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, vegideli sausages, mozz cheezly, onion, spinach, and some baked tofu I had. It was pretty much a clean out the fridge meal. Oh yeah, and it's topped with parmezano.

The Worlds Biggest Salad

Okay,so that's a completely unsubstantiated claim and I offer you no proof, but it was a pretty damn big salad. Let's see, what was in there? Rocket, tomatoes, onion, baked tofu, balsamic dressing... Ack, there was most likely more but I forget. On the side is a little roast potato salad, so I suppose I had salad with a side of salad, what fun! Btw, this meal was pretty tough on my jaw (tmj arthritis issues), I don't know why I think it's helpful to tell you all that. Maybe I should start a tmj friendliness rating... Or not, because that would be highly dull. Anyhoo, in other news, I bought a bike recently. I love it. Like seriously. Today I got to cycle all along the river, and fields, and saw wild bunnies and heelan coos. It was delightful. Anyhoo, in case anyone vaguely cares, here's a picture of my bike:
Due to the shape of the outside of my flat, it was impossible to get a complete side view, you're all gonna have to just like with it, k?

Quiche!

In the quiche is sundried tomatoes, red onions, and spinach. Served with a quick side salad and some mayo. Tasted like summer. The leftovers are calling to me...

Korean Vegetable Pancakes... Kind of.

As you can see they kinda fell apart, but who cares? They still tasted good. The recipe is from Asian Vegan, which I'm currently loving and plan to make a lot more from. Inside the pancake is onion, carrot, garlic, beansprouts, and chives. Served with chilli dipping sauce.

So, I Squashed Me Some Taters...

Look at them... Sitting there looking delicious, waiting to be devoured. Mwah ha ha.I'm fairly convinced that Dreena Burton invented this recipe specifically for students at exam time, who haven't had time to go proper food shopping in a while, and don't have much time to cook. Well either that or she invented it specifically for five year olds. Is there really much of a difference? This time I put a little fresh basil (yes, yes, I do put it on everything), and dried oregano on them, and to compensate for eating a meal entirely composed of potato, I used spray oil. Doesn't taste any different with spray oil, in fact I think I might prefer it. Anyhoo, in conclusion, exam time sucks and potato squashers rock.

Pizza of Win!

Yes, I declare this to be the official pizza of win. Why? Well it's full of all the win foods. Spelt base, garlic sauce, caramelised red onions, pine nuts, and fresh basil. Win. Just for extra win, here's a slice shot:
Now, what did i have with this classy beast of a pizza? Ketchup. Oh yes. I make classy things trashy.

If anybody's wondering why my pictures have gone a bit downhill recently, I've decided to blame it on the fact that I've turned the Aerogrow off, and so don't have the fake almost natural light anymore. Don't worry, she'll be back! I'm just deciding what to grow in her next.

Post O' Orange

Yes, for some reason everything I've eaten over the past few days have been various shades of orange, how bizarre. Everything is also from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan which I just got recently.
Sorry for the blurry shot, I think it was still steamy when I took the picture. Anyhoo, this is the cashew ginger tofu and tamari roasted chickpeas.
This is the blackened tofu and potato squashers. I absolutely loved both. I'm currently eyeing up the tofu leftovers, I doubt they'll make it to lunchtime tomorrow.

Huzzah!

Food o plenty in this post. First up is the food of sick people all over the world, mac and cheese. I was in hospital last week because apparently blood clots aren't supposed to be in your lung, who knew? Well I did, but I am very clever. Anyhoo, when I got out I wanted to make a batch of something hearty that I could work my way through for a few days, so as always I went for the new farm mac and cheese. I reduced the oil quite a lot though, because it really is quite ridiculous. Here it is with roasted brussel sprouts, which are the rockingest cruciferous vegetable around:

I had an influx of vegans this weekend for much drunken and non drunken fun. Some out of towners came up on the Friday night which to me seemed like a perfect excuse to have a pizza party.
This first pizza has basil tofu ricotta and pesto, it was the yum.
This one has mozzarella cheezly and home made pepperoni. Also the yum. There was a third pizza that was essentially a combination of both of the above, but at that point my stomach had given up on letting me eat pizza and I was far too bloated to get up and take a picture.

No food! I've been tagged!

Not in the criminal way, obviously. DJ over at the skint vegan tagged me to do one of these meme thingimijigs. I have to tell you five things about myself and then tag five other bloggers. I'm not really one for drive by tagging, so if you read this, and you're a vegan blogger, consider yourself tagged. Okay, so onto the most likely dull lelly facts.

1. I'm currently radioactive due to a scan I had at hospital yesterday. I feel like I should be fighting crime. My weapon shall be battered pizza, and I'll get rid of the criminals with atherosclerosis. (too geeky? me? never).
2. Continuing along the geek theme - years ago I read an article in a newspaper about bumble bee behaviour and physiology. I enjoyed it so much that I cut it out and if I need cheered up, I re-read it. Bumble bees ftw!
3. Tofu is my absolute favourite food because it's just so versatile. One of my pet peeves is when people (who usually have never actually eaten it) say they don't like it, at which point I big-headedly exclaim "aha! this is because you've never had me cook it for you!".
4. I am ever so slightly besotted with Ron Weasley. NOT, Rupert Grint, only Ron Weasley.
5. I love the way Jenna from Vegan Freak Radio says my name. She just says it so much cuter than anybody else.

I now feel oddly exposed...

Tofu and Potatoes

It's very odd really that some form of tofu, tempeh, or seitan and potatoes is my stand by comfort food, because as an omni I was never much of a meat and potatoes kind of girl. In fact, the thought makes me sick. Ugh. Anyway, the tofu wasn't even marinated, i just kinda poured some balsamic vinegar and worcester sauce onto it when it was cooking. The potatoes were just boiled and then I tossed in some fresh basil, and I made a balsamic onion gravy type thing. Excellent.